Breaking the mold: Architectural conservationists explain artistic effort to restore Nivola horses

For a young Denise Kocur, Italian Modernist sculptor Constantino Nivola’s creativity was way more than fine art. It was fine fun.

On Thursday afternoon, Kocur stood a few feet from one of the shiny fiberglass horses the late Nivola created and that late community leaders J. Irwin and Xenia Miller gifted to Richards Elementary School in Columbus in 1970.

“We climbed on them,” Kocur said, smiling broadly at the memory from 1970. “We played on them.”

Kocur, a retired Columbus East High School art teacher, stood at the soon-to-open Columbus Propeller Inc. maker space at 4760 Ray Boll Boulevard at the Airpark Columbus College Campus. Kocur and art teacher/daughter Alison, who remembers the horses from her own childhood, visited an informal Landmark Columbus Foundation gathering to see New York City architectural conservationists talk about their work to restore some of Niovola’s near-exact 1964 concrete horses on New York City’s Upper West Side.

Those horses have been damaged by wear from elements that have blurred details from parts such as their eyes and ears — and mysteriously have had their muzzles and legs chopped off by vandals. So Edward G. Fitzgerald and Danielle Pape of Jablonski Building Conservation Inc. have worked since Monday to study and make a plastic mold of one of the shiny, black Columbus horses — pieces that themselves have been repaired and restored a time or two.

They were scheduled to take that mold back to New York Friday to then eventually use it to make new pieces for the damaged concrete horses to be restored and returned to Wise Towers Plaza, a public housing authority complex on New York’s Upper West Side. The duo is hoping that completion could happen by summer.

Architects, sculptors and other artists frequently repeat elements of some of their work in creations they do elsewhere.

Fitzgerald squatted near his laptop to show visitors a series of photos of his and his teammate’s work in a small basement space in Wise Towers where the concrete horses originally were placed.

“We call this the stable,” Fitzgerald said, showing a shot of the concrete horses tightly situated nearly nose to tail.

Besides the Kocurs, Thursdays guests at the former Cummins Inc. space included people such as Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop and wife Pam, and local businessmen Jeff Baker and John Pickett.

Bryan Rushton, Columbus Propeller Inc. president, said he was pleased that a small collection of people attended the show-and-tell of sorts on a warm and sunny afternoon and evening just before the space’s official opening March 26.

“I’m not trying to or expecting to compete (for attention) with 75 degrees and sunny,” Rushton said. “I’m just hoping that the Propeller can be a catalyst for this type of thing.”